~ This is all me, laid bare. Journeys of the inner road, stumbling, falling, and getting up again and again. Live, laugh, cry, hurt, be unabashedly human. You're already beautiful.

You’re weary inside. You’re frustrated at something or someone. You’re beating yourself up in every way. You’re almost right over the edge and then out of nowhere, someone you know brings you a new breath of life – a kind word, a caring gesture, an empathetic exchange or just love.

Somehow you feel a little better, a little lighter, a little more okay about everything. This is emotional shelter. This is what you can provide for someone else with the tiniest of gestures. You can help someone to breathe a little better.

Do something for somebody, however small, whatever you can, instead of waiting till you can do everything for everybody. A little goes a long way in a myriad of ways. In this manner, you “pay your toll” for being here. You make someone’s life a little brighter, a little warmer.

I just want you to know, you are precious. You are beyond precious, actually. You are so unique is existence that there is no one like you, no one able to fully do the things you can do. You are so important in so many unspoken hearts that sometimes it may feel like you are quite alone in the world. I just want you to know, that whoever you are, whatever you feel and have done, you are loved. I love you. We love you. We are Earth and all her inhabitants. We are the stars combined and the milky way united. You are so connected to all of us that it is difficult to imagine you as separate, as much as a part of you may feel that way from time to time. We want you to take your time.

Take your time with yourself, take your time with your heart that is making a courageous effort to stay open in a world that can sometimes be so very harsh. Take your time with the people around you, with your beloved and your emotional assailants. Take your time to be with all of your emotions, the storm and calm ocean both residing in you. Take your time to pick up the chipped off, broken and shattered pieces of your tender heart. Take your time with your feelings of ‘not enough-ness’. Take your time to feel through it into enough-ness. Take your time to scratch the itch on your back, to rub the dryness at the corner of your eye and to wipe the sweat breaking out of your forehead. Take your time to stand up off your chair, take your time to adjust and turn your hips to walk in different directions.

Take your time with love, anger, pain, jealousy, guilt and strength. Take your time to come to know each and every one of them intimately, till the extent when they surface, it is but old familiar friends. Take your time to soften the walls you’ve barricaded around your sparkling self, your heart filled with timeless wisdom and your illuminating soul. Take your time to build a new kind of wall, a wall-less wall that has an intuitive, gentle, kind gate-raising and welcoming all who swear to protect your heart as well as you do. Take your time with finding your life’s path. Take your time with discovering what it is, that you’re good at doing that would arise within you a sense of contentment.

Take your time with the heart of your beloved for within your words and actions holds either swords or fairy dusts toward her kindred spirit. Take your time to feel so very deeply into every crook and cranny of your beloved’s inner universe. Take your time to be acquainted with the parts within her that she would rather not possess. Take your time to befriend those skeletons so that she may, someday come to do the same for herself. Take your time to trace your fingers around your beloved’s cracks, seen and unseen; introducing heart glues that would reconnect and seal those scars. Take your time to help your beloved acknowledge and see that she deserves every bit of good in the universe and for her to adorn the golden robe of beauty for who she is. Take your time to trace every curve and edge on her, such that she may come to own her body and wear it like it’s made of luminescent pearls.

Take your time with all that would come your way, for if it wasn’t meant for you specifically, it would not be here. Take your time with your knees when it’s down and your fists, bruised from pounding the cold hard floor. Take your time to rise, just like you always do, with or without supporting hands around. Take your time to raise your chin and brace for the sunlight, for after every rain comes the sun, after every storm comes the calm. Take your time with this universe, this world, this planet, this Life of yours-for it is sacred and special.

Take your time to love yourself, every day, every moment in every breath you decide to take. Take your time to say “I love myself” and “I love you”. Because, we love you more than words could convey. Thank you.

One of the greatest lessons you’ve brought me is that: we can’t control anything. The tighter we cling onto something and want to shape it to the way we idealize it, the more it slips away, the more it fades away, the more it runs away. Total release of control, total release of our own mind images of how things should look like, of how things should be like and how things should feel like, must all be released. Because if we don’t, then we won’t be able to stay open to what IS HAPPENING right now. We will be rejecting it on some level. And it will create suffering. We will attempt to claw at it to make it go the way it’s “supposed to be”. And we would try to romanticize and idealize and make things between us seem more beautiful that what it really is. If they key doesn’t fit the lock, there’s no amount of force of angling that can make it fit. They key and lock must part because they were never ultimately meant to stay together for a long time. What happens when they key keeps trying to fit? Friction. Tearing. Disintegration. Damage. Both sides are dying, getting hurt.

Releasing all of it and admitting that we do not have any control over what is happening is the only total freedom. When things are happening, would we wish it were another way, yes of course. But we cant stay blind to the fact that we can’t make the key fit. The key and lock could be moulded and reforged but both needs to meet halfway. Anything short of that will make it impossible. And theres no point in trying to understand why. Because understanding why isn’t going to change what the lock wants, what the key wants. Let the lock be lock, let the key be key. Both has not diminished in worth. Both need to look elsewhere for the real source of what they need.

No amount of your partner’s love can ever suffice and heal and mend this perceived hole if we do not love ourselves enough. We will keep seeking each other’s love in disguise and illusion that the other’s love can fill this perceived void inside. But no matter how much is given and taken, it’s never enough. And we will keep grasping. We will keep searching for it. And more friction will occur. Arguments, quarrels and exhaustion will occur. If we want the key and lock to fit, key needs to be fully key and lock needs to be fully lock. Self-love is the foundation and base. Self-love needs to be there. We need to stay in the ultimate, deepest center of truth, love and soul and only then, meet each other at required points. Otherwise, if we don’t come from this, especially this self-love, everything will be shaky. The very foundation will be shaky. Chairs will have no legs. We will keep falling and creating more suffering for each other. Most importantly, we need to understand self-love, we need to love ourselves fully and that means honouring ourselves and doing everything required to maintain us in that space, in that room inside ourselves. We need to be conscious about why we’re doing what we’re doing. We need to first know our purpose in every word and action, not just to each other but to ourselves the truth underlying our actions. Just because we don’t meet each other in the way we like does not mean that we’re not meeting each other at all and neither does it mean we’re not worth being met. Whatever purpose we’re meant for, once it is served and fulfilled, we let go. We let go with a full heart, with only love and blessings. And we’re off to the next journey.

Initially your heart will burn, will claw, will twist and turn. Your heart will bleed and be torn asunder. It will pound and beat itself. But you stay with it. You don’t look away. Scream if you have to. Dance like a madman if you have to. Cry if you have to. But stay, stay, stay with it. You breathe deep as you stay with all of that pain and agony. You keep staying in love itself. You keep loving through it all. You keep loving, loving and loving. And in the next moment, before you know it, it will be better. In the next moment it will go away. In the next moment you’ll be okay. In the next moment you’ll be released. In the next moment you’ll be free. In this next moment, you’ll be love. I promise.

Chapter 1
Tuning in to the soul before youholding space for life and universe arising

We can feel another soul totally and completely if we choose to. We have the ability to tap into the space as it is and feel, to understand. The soul before you is not separate from you, the soul before you is no lesser nor more than you. The soul before you is no more or less important and significant than you. How you treat this soul is also how you treat a part of yourself because every soul that crosses your path is a fragment and an external representation of a part of us.

People who are hard and cold toward others are often hard on themselves when the rocky end of things hit home. This does not have anything to do with karma. It is the basic nature of “how you do anything, is how you do everything”. Every soul wishes to be heard, seen and felt. Every soul wishes to be acknowledged for their existence and for their existence to feel meaningful and useful. By caring for other souls we allow love to arise in our own lives. By caring for other souls, our own shell softens. By caring for other souls, our hearts grows a little bigger each time.

Recall an experience when you opened up to someone during a challenging time, in hopes of receiving an encouragement, a kind word, a feeling of understanding and acceptance and instead of that you received quite the opposite. You felt unheard, unseen, unfelt. Perhaps even a little feeling of regret for opening up to this person. While you were hoping for a touch of human kindness, you received a verbal, albeit positive-intended lesson of “being sensible”, “reality”, “look on the bright side”. The interaction suddenly becomes about the other person and you attempt to listen to them first in hopes they’ll come around back to you but you’re left dangling at the edge of your emotional cliff. They were listening to talk and not listening to listen. Now, realize that we’ve all done that to other souls unintentionally too. Let us now be reminded of the ways to truly tune in to another soul and holding a safe, heartfelt space for their opening, at times tender hearts.

Your attention is powerful. It is powerful because wherever your attention goes, your consciousness, awareness and energy flows. In the society, we are made to feel like we have to be okay all the time, that it is not okay to be hurting, not okay to be upset, not okay to be grieving. Because of this, we give an automated response of “I’m okay” to people. Instead of asking someone if they’re okay, you already intuitively know that they’re not. So tune in to this soul without needing to inquire, trust your own intuitions because you are more tapped in than you’d ever know.

Ask yourself questions: How is she feeling right now? What may be the causes of her current emotions? What does she need most right now to feel better, to heal even for a little, an open hearted listening? A gentle accepting embrace? An understanding touch? An empathetic kind word? A gaze of warmth, kindness and acceptance? Letting her know that you understand that she’s going through a process right now and that you’re here to hold a safe space for her? Just by being a quiet lighthouse in company for her? You know best because our intuitions always do when we tap in. Everything that she is undergoing and experiencing can be seen and felt from her entire exterior. The strength in her eyes, the subtle flashing frown at the end of her lips, the way her facial features feel today, the way her physical body stands today. It is in every word, every expression and every interaction she has. Tune in and feel without judgment by being a pure observer.

We have an immensely powerful healing nature and more often than not, listening totally, and completely without crafting an input while she is talking is exactly what a soul needs to allow natural healing to arise. More often than not, especially when advice isn’t asked for, a simple “I’m glad you shared this with me, I understand that this isn’t an easy time, I want you to know that I’ll always be here for you and please be patient and gentle with yourself during this process. Call me whenever you need to.” Is more healing, nurturing and loving than any babble we can give. Understand that the soul before you is already in a mess and giving unsought advice for the next half hour only complicates things. When she is speaking, this is no longer about you, don’t make it about you. This is not an opportunity for you to show how wise you are, how well you can fix things, how much more emotionally stable you are. Get your self out of the way. Let the moment be of her essence. Never make an attempt to convince.

Don’t try to fix anyone, don’t try to heal anyone and don’t try to create a reaction. Only a pure offering from the heart will do any good. An ocean wave blankets the sandy shore, recedes, returns and the cycle continues. Be that ocean wave. Stay in your intuition and you’ll know how much to give, how much to say, and very importantly, when to draw back to allow the soul a personal breathing space. Creating a sense of healing environment and supportive space allows for her natural healing to occur rather than gushing in like a tsunami, drowning out everything and seemingly demanding healing to occur instantaneously. We heal naturally when we are seen, heard and felt. Remember that how you feel becomes what she feels. Stay in a position of pure lovingness. You do this for her not because you feel a responsibility to, not because you want to prove something, but purely because as a soul, you can do this for another soul and you will. Allow her process, allow her own pace. As candles, you relight her flame every time it goes out, and you allow her, her own breathing space for her flame to burn. We are all candles for each other.

A soul’s hurt, pain, anger and unsettling emotions are not an annoyance. They’re a natural part of process. Honour everything that is occurring and arising by not belittling her emotions. Stay in your own heart space even as you reach out with nurturance. By allowing her to heal, the world heals.

I receive the question of “What is your religion?” a lot and find myself without a reply that would sufficiently encapsulate what i feel deeply. How do you classify, categorise and term a person who connects with Jesus with all his heart, but isn’t Christian? A person who connects with Buddha with all his heart, but isn’t Buddhist? A person who speaks to Ganesha, to Laksmi with all his heart, yet isn’t a Hindu? A person who connects with the Divine Source aka God, a person who connects with the Deepest Knowing, with the Lake of All aka Holy Spirit? A person who connects with the Ascended Masters? A person who connects with Spirit Animals, Guardian Angels and Ancient Ancestors?

Jesus wasn’t a Christian. Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist. Ganesha wasn’t a Hindu. Allah wasn’t a muslim. They all taught one thing and one thing only: Love. That was their main message, the main driving force behind every action and word. And no, not the kind of love that you may have on mind. Not the kind of love that says “I’ll love you only when you are ‘x’, i’ll love you only when you do ‘x’. Not the kind of love that plenty modern day relationships are made up of that could break off when “he’s pissed me off enough or she doesn’t give me enough attention and care”. Not the kind of love that falters today and strengthens tomorrow but the kind of love that encompasses everything-Love itself.

They were teachers of love. And if that’s what i “worship”, “live as”, “connect to”, “main teaching”, “main learning”, how then, do i answer a question like that? A hippie? A spiritualist? No category nor word can ever sufficiently encapsulate. And perhaps no word should ever. So we return to the simplest, “Everything but full nothingness”, a category becomes senseless.

I’ve been receiving numerous surprised reactions when in the midst of sharing, i go “I’ve been feeling lost”. Responses comes in the manner of “We never thought you’d be that way”. And i realize truly, how hard everyone is on themselves without realizing and how frequent it is that we project a certain image to people we want to become when we think in terms of “i’ll get there”. Whatever “there” is.

And so often, people suppress their emotions. They go “i shouldn’t be feeling this way, that’s not spiritual”. This in turn shows what their mental image of “being spiritual” is. People harbor an image that when they “get there”, all emotions will no longer affect them. They envision a permanent zen state, forever ecstatic. And because of this, they give themselves an extra hard time when they are feeling “unspiritual emotions”.

The question becomes “who says that you won’t be feeling all these emotions again?” The worst thing you could do to your body, mind and soul is suppressing your emotions and not moving through them. They build up and manifest as illness and in cases of prolonged extreme suppression, manifests as diseases such as cancer. Your physical body is the direct mirror of your inner self, whatever you do not face within, manifests outwards to get your attention.

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions, express them and moving through them is not a free pass to being a violent, agonizing person. Feeling them and moving through them is saying “It’s okay to be human. This is what i’m feeling.” And you feel it so fully, so acceptingly, so lovingly towards yourself that everything melts away. Everything gets carried away from your open, willing heart. It will hurt. It will claw, it will growl, it will yell. But your heart’s total openness will free you from the grasps of emotional turmoil.

Whatever you run from will return. Sure, it is a lot more entertaining and easy to distract ourselves with a show, food, person and exercise when emotions scratch at the surface. And we’d even somehow feel better after doing that. Sometimes it returns, sometimes it doesn’t (say, the clarity from the silence in exercising). When it does come back however, it’ll come back twice as hard.

Wear your heart on your sleeves and look at your own heart. It is okay to be human, feel. Being honest with yourself isn’t weak. It’s the direct opposite. And when you share honestly, without a shred of embarrassment and self-judgement with another soul who exists between you two, a safe space, then you create the same opportunity for release for him/her.

It’s okay to admit, we’re all at some point, feeling lost. And that’s the cycle of our humanness, we “find ourselves” and then we “lost it” again. And it goes on and one. Until the pendulum stops swinging. Until we realise we are not the swinging (insert miley cyrus wrecking ball joke), that we are at its very center, still, unwavering, watching.

The swinging happens until it no longer needs to happen. In the mean time, love yourself and live with an open heart.

I woke up this morning and felt a need to write this observation out as an article. Perhaps for myself to read and contemplate further or for those who feel the same way to understand that it is normal.

For the entire duration of 2013 so far, my time have been both intentionally and unintentionally spent on deep self-discovery, touching on the sides of our humanness and exploration of the corners of our souls.

2013 has been the year where I dipped my toes in the creative side of us, something I’ve never been interested in up till now. Painting, dancing, playing and writing music, gardening, visiting art gallery events, spoken word and dance performances. Some settings had initial bits of discomfort as I find myself in an absolutely foreign setting and types of people. These discomforts provided beautiful space and opportunities for self-realizations, to only get even deeper in comfort and acceptance of ourselves in the end. Out of all these sudden surge of creative activities and witnessing artists in action, I am deeply awed and humbled by the one thing that stayed constant and apparent in every artist. The one essence of soul expression. The one thing that every painter, dancer, musician, performer had in common and shone through between the silence of moments. That body, heart, mind and soul all collided and fused into one thing and that thing fused and disappeared into the Oneness of everything and everything became Now, until Now was no more. Sometimes in watching them I find myself in moments between space and time, where every sound and sight become so intensely silent yet bursting with glorious sounds, emotions and soul.

Dancing, painting, music, performances, all boiled down to the same space brought from meditation. And from all the years of physical activities, martial arts, running, swimming, trekking, nature, cycling and the gym all boiled down to the same space brought from meditation. These things brings us deeply into the aliveness of this very moment. In this very moment our constant mind needs become no more. And it is all so liberating for us. What we need to know is that, this very same moment that stopped space and time can be realized in our everyday lives as long as it is recognized, felt and expanded.

2013 has been the year when I’ve made more peace with myself than I ever have, where I’ve dived deep and dug out the ugly things in myself through meditation. There have been intense moments of release, self-forgiveness and acceptance. The spiritual path is just another term meant to describe self-discovery. It is simply the complete baring of our souls and looking at the deep hellish darkness that exist in parts of us and the things that we’ve done that we wish we didn’t and the light that ultimately pervades everything and the true essence of us. Bouts of cathartic experiences with crying, laughing, yelling, screaming, roaring and facing every past wound, mistake and mending and healing from it. Spirituality is looking at ourselves point blank when it would be easier to turn away. It is when the universe reveals itself to us, and words such as ‘Divine’, ‘All’, ‘Oneness’, ‘Source’ and the all popularized word of ‘God’ are used to describe this presence. When we dig deep, we find God. Not separate of ourselves, not someone seating on a golden throne up in the sky looking to judge or bless people. When we dig deep we experience, witness and feel the Divine as everything, in everything and with everything. It is both without and within. And it is often neither. Duality stops. And with that, the chatters of our mind stops. We feel a full emptiness. We feel a deep compassion, empathy and understanding as never before. And it doesn’t go away. Even in our anger it pervades through. Our anger bouts become shorter, we stop being so frustrated and angry at things, and when we do find ourselves lost momentarily in these emotions, we immediately bring ourselves out of it and apologize both to the party and ourselves. We start feeling the deep humanness and Godliness of everyone and we start to really hear and feel one another. A profound, indescribable sense of non-judgment, acceptance comes through for everything.

The thing is not to hang on to the moments when we have ecstatic divine soul-revealing moments and to be upset when we’re not. All these seeking stops and equanimity arises. The deep recognition that there is the highest light that exists in every moment, bad or good, frees us. And it allows us to be deeply in the situation. This doesn’t mean we become saintly or immune to the throes of our humanness. We actually dive more deeply into it, and feel more deeply. We become totally vulnerable, wearing our heart on our sleeves, baring our souls and speaking in Truth-all while respecting the free will of people, of placing great importance of the well-being of everyone’s hearts and of servitude.

We stop feeling the incessant need to make a point in spontaneous debates or conversation. We stop needing to seem right to the other person. We slow down and recognize in the moments of heated conversations that their heart is more important than us seeming right. We start to recognize that in pricing their heart above needing to be right that we nurture and help them to grow boundlessly more. All while knowing to protect our own hearts.

The difficulty that people experience when they find themselves saying “I am so tired from all the giving” is because they forget that in total vulnerability and lovingness comes also a place and need for the right type of self-protection. There is a very thin but important line. It is the space and line inside where we are able to give our whole selves and still not bring anyone’s emotional pain into our own lives. It is where we are able to feel completely their pain and sorrow, to soothe their wounds and yet not bring any of that into our own lives. It is where we are able to hold the space to listen with great empathy and respect to someone pouring out their hearts, and yet not make their stories into our own. It is when we are so deeply in the very moment until we and the moment are not separate yet there is a very distinct presence of us in the background, viewing everything as purely an observer. It is when we love so deeply, care so deeply, nurture so vastly and still have plenty of room for our own selves. It is when we learn how to say yes and no, with lovingness. That is where balance is understood and held. That is where “God” never gets tired and revitalizes from giving. You and “God” are not separate. There is no two, only One.

And with my “love life”, things have shifted that I hadn’t noticed until I looked at it. For all the moments I’ve had being nurtured and nurturing and tending to people I’ve come to find myself in a different spot. I start to see and feel what love has always been when it is not clouded by our own minds and what commercialization made it to be. My sweet friends ask me about my relationship status and I realize the feeling of fullness in the now. For the past 8 years of my life I have been occupied with the mind of the need to have a partner and for a few years that was all that was important to me. I believed that we weren’t complete until we met our partner. I believed that two completed one. I believe that we were supposed to fill a space in each other’s lives. I believed that we needed one another to flourish. I believed that “Once we have a partner our lives will bloom the way it was meant to”. So I kept seeking, and looking, and yearned and prized for the validation from outside factors. With certain types of male circles, influenced by the current standing of cultures, movies, media and communities, women started to feel more of a quest for conquest. There was always some emotional hollow space that felt like it needed to be filled. And it made me vastly disillusioned and I felt vastly misaligned within.

2013 has been the year when all of these dissolved away by itself. With unexplainable, mystical experiences and encounters with women from different countries became a restoration and re-alignment within. There is no longer any hollow space that we’ve ever needed to fill. Fullness have always been within. Two people coming together is no longer clouded by the mind-crazed belief of needing to complete one another. Two people coming together as wholes and not as halves. Two people who has no need to try to treat the relationship as sacred because they already recognize the sacred that is us. Two people no longer start to project each other’s needs onto one another.

2013 has been the year where I have really felt, listened, understood the essence of beautiful beings, man and women. Our relationships become not for ourselves but for everyone around us. This brings about a feeling of fullness and completeness. Where we no longer feel more worthy only when we have a partner, where a partnership is seen for what it really is. We start to understand and feel that there is no worry or rush when it comes to meeting your mate. When you meet yourself, you meet the universe.

Now a certified spiritual healer and starting my degree in psychology in January, we’ll see where life takes us 🙂 Peace and love to you, sacred one.